That's the conclusion, and a reasonable if controversial one, of a yearlong investigation by the state's Little Hoover Commission.

"A great public institution is falling apart," commission member Virginia Ellis said in a statement.

Literally falling apart.

Since the 1990s, some 168,000 acres have been added to the park system using voter-approved bonds. At the same time, operational funding - money for maintenance and staffing - declined in part because of general fund cuts by the governor and Legislature.

Today there is a backlog of maintenance that exceeds $1 billion.

So what do we do, just keep adding land to the 278-unit system?

Doing that only perpetuates the problem.

"The growth curve for the department is no longer in acreage, but in deferred maintenance," according to the Little Hoover Commission report.

The 13-member commission makes a host of recommendations, including adding a new job classification of "park manager" allowing workers other than park rangers, who must have peace-officer training, to oversee a park. The governor and Legislature are urged to commit to a consistent level of general fund support for the system. And the department should study crime trends in the parks and hire more rangers as needed.

The Parks Department management structure is obsolete, the report argues, one example being its focus on land acquisition at the expense of maintenance and finding ways to generate income.

But undoubtedly the most controversial suggestion is to appoint an advisory council to decide which parks truly have "statewide significance" and which serve more regional or local needs. Those units falling into the latter category should be transferred to local agencies, the report said.

Work on this report began before it became known in July that the Parks Department had been hiding some $22 million even as it moved to shutter 70 of the 278 parks because of budget cuts.

Those budgetary shenanigans serve to underscore the commission's call for structural changes in department management just as our inability to care for the parks we have makes the case for a close, albeit hard, look at the need to eliminating some.

Nobody is against parks. But nobody can be for adding parks just for the sake of having them either.